VIII 



CASES OF ADAPTATION 



141 



of melted ice of all shapes and sizes. On the 20th May he 

 had just crossed the Petchora to Ust-Zylma, over ice which 

 was already cracking. 



" It was past midnight, and at any moment the crash might 

 come. Cracks running for miles, with a noise like distant thunder, 

 warned us that a mighty power was all but upon us, a force which 

 seemed to impress the mind with a greater sense of power than 



Fig. 17. 



Ice breaking up on the Petchora 



River. 



even the crushing weight of water at Niagara, a force which breaks 

 up the ice more than a mile wide, at least three feet thick, and 

 weighted with another three feet of snow, at the rate of a hundred 

 miles in twenty-four hours. . . . We slept for a couple of hours, 

 when, looking out of the window, we found that the crash had 

 come ; the mighty river, Petchora, was a field of pack-ice and 

 ice-floes marching past towards the sea at the rate of six miles an 

 hour. We ran out on to the banks to find half the inhabitants of 

 Ust-Zylma watching the impressive scene." 



A week later he writes : 



" Winter is finally vanquished for the year, and the fragments of 

 his beaten army are compelled to retreat to the triumphant music 

 of thousands of song-birds, amidst the waving of green leaves and 

 the illumination of gay flowers of every hue. The transformation 



